His divorce has been final for only six months, but already Sen. John Kerry has acquired a first-class rake's reputation in the rarefied world of rich, handsome, young bachelor senators.

To hear the gossips tell it, the tall, dark-haired former Navy officer with the surgically improved chin has been cutting a swath through the ranks of America's most available young women, inspiring both admiration and envy among the capital's preening young singles.

There was the lithesome, British-born researcher for ABC-TV, Emma Gilby, whose long affair with Kerry has left her speechless about it. "There's just nothing I want to say about it," she said.

There was also Morgan Fairchild, the movie actress whom Kerry reportedly courted on the Q.T. while dating another woman.

More recently, there was Catherine Oxenberg.

His long love affair with Boston attorney Roanne Sragow collapsed under the weight of repeated press allegations of simultaneous love affairs Kerry was conducting with Sragow and other women, most notably Fairchild

John Kerry and Julia did not formally divorce until 1988, by which time Kerry had been dating (in the strict sense adulterously) for more than half a decade. The gossip columns linked Kerry romantically to, among others, actress Morgan Fairchild, Cornelia Guest and Patti Davis, the leftist daughter of Republican President Ronald Reagan.

After his divorce to Julia Thorne was finalized, notes a CBS News timeline on Kerrys career, it was apparent how much she helped the family financially. The divorce left him strapped for cash Before finally renting apartments in Washington and Boston, he was a bit of a roamer.

Translation: during six years of separation from his wife Julia, John Kerry continued to live on money she provided to him. Before and after their divorce in 1988, Kerry slept around  both in the beds of other women and in the plush accommodations provided to him by lobbyists, especially after his election to the U.S. Senate in the Orwellian year 1984.

Among the goodies lobbyists and other insiders provided Kerry, writes Michael Grunwald of The New Republic, were a car he leased for 16 months without any payments, a ritzy condo he rented for $200 per month from a friendly developer, a no-risk $21,000 real estate windfall arranged by a top fund-raiser, a lobbyists $8,000-per-month waterfront apartment where he crashed without paying.

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